Verdezyne raises $3M for organism-made biofuels

Verdezyne, a company that develops special microorganisms used to produce biofuels and biochemicals, has brought in $3 million of an expected $15.2 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Carlsbad, Calif., the company is backed by Life Science Angels,… Continue Reading

Big Stage Entertainment wants you to take your 3-D avatars from game to game

Big Stage Entertainment wants you to take your 3-D avatars from game to game

If you’re going to go to a lot of trouble to create a 3-D avatar, or virtual character, you might as well spread it around. That’s the point of Big Stage Entertainment’s PortableYou program.

The company uses a facial modeling system to render a faithful version… Continue Reading

Lehman Bros. backs myShape amid death rattle

Lehman Bros. backs myShape amid death rattle

Only a few weeks before its demise, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. led a third round of funding for myShape, an online store that helps women find clothes that fit their exact dimensions. The company’s venture branch committed to the contribution in August before filing for… Continue Reading

Big Stage closing a new round of venture money

Big Stage closing a new round of venture money

Next month, personalized video-mashup site Big Stage will launch its public beta. The site lets you upload three high-resolution photos of yourself. It then stitches those photos into a 3-D avatar. You can accessorize your avatar and put your avatar into videos and amusing scenery. You can… Continue Reading

Poll by SodaHead: Is it okay to export friends’ emails from Facebook

Poll by SodaHead: Is it okay to export friends’ emails from Facebook

SodaHead is one of many companies that offers a polling widget that you can embed on a blog or social network. Others include Polldaddy, Pollection, JS-Kit, Vizu, and others. But SodaHead differentiates itself by being focused on social interactions.

Poll Answers

SodaHead pairs polls with features… Continue Reading

Coda Genomics: Better proteins through engineering

Coda Genomics: Better proteins through engineering

Coda Genomics, a Laguna Hills, Calif., biotechnology company founded in 2005, concentrates on a thorny but little-realized challenge in biotechnology: Genetic engineering is easy. Protein manufacture is hard.

The biotech industry was founded on the science of recombinant DNA, which is essentially the trick of… Continue Reading